The Surprising Benefits of Work/Life Support

To succeed, almost every employee needs work/life support at some point. Women and people of color need it the most, research shows, because they face greater challenges and have fewer resources available to them. They are also the least likely to receive it, however, and as a result often are forced to change or leave jobs and lose out on opportunities for advancement.

Given that situation, the authors decided to examine what effects various corporate work/life programs had on the management workforce. Analyzing data from more than 800 U.S. companies over 30 years, they found that when companies offered flexible work schedules, family leave, and childcare support to all employees, the percentage of women and people of color in management rose significantly. In fact, those work/life benefits had a larger impact than the most popular racial-equity programs did.

Companies have long known that programs promoting work/life balance boost productivity, reduce turnover, and improve employees’ mental and physical health. And now it’s clear that they are also a powerful way to increase organizational diversity.

Idea in Brief

The Problem

To succeed, at some point almost every worker needs work/life support, and the data suggests that women and people of color need it most. But they don’t receive it—or even learn about company benefits—nearly as often as they should.

The Context

For many companies, the ideal worker remains somebody unencumbered by family obligations, who can adhere to the kind of demanding daily schedules and career trajectories that were standard for white men in the 1950s and have intensified since.

The Way Forward

Companies need to spell out and uniformly offer policies in three areas: flexibility, time off, and childcare. Doing so, studies show, helps workers and managers alike by lowering stress, improving productivity, boosting retention, and increasing diversity.

Corporate programs that support work/life balance promote productivity, reduce turnover, and improve employees’ mental and physical health. That much is well-known. But our research has revealed another benefit: They can also boost your organization’s diversity. In fact, when it comes to increasing diversity among managers, they’re better than the most popular racial-equity programs.

Alexandra Kalev is an associate professor and the chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. She is a coauthor of Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn’t (Belknap Press, 2022).

Frank Dobbin is the chair of the Department of Sociology at Harvard University and Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences. He is a coauthor of Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn’t (Belknap Press, 2022).

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